


Damned if I do, bored if I don't

by heavenisalibrary



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, High School AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 09:16:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1299673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s a senior, totally gorgeous, emanating confidence and glowing from within in a way that makes people stare as she walks down the hallway. Sometimes he thinks she’s a cheerleader, because he sees her with those girls, and sometimes he thinks she’s an improbably attractive math geek because of the way she is in class, and sometimes he thinks she’s a goddess, just some ephemeral thing made of clouds and stardust that shifts around his every attempt to figure her out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damned if I do, bored if I don't

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: River/Eleven, High School AU. (Clearly they're British going to an American high school. Yeah. I don't know either.)

She’s a senior, totally gorgeous, emanating confidence and glowing from within in a way that makes people stare as she walks down the hallway. Sometimes he thinks she’s a cheerleader, because he sees her with those girls, and sometimes he thinks she’s an improbably attractive math geek because of the way she is in class, and sometimes he thinks she’s a goddess, just some ephemeral thing made of clouds and stardust that shifts around his every attempt to figure her out.

John can’t talk to her, though — he’s just a lowly freshman. Not by age — he’d at least be a junior if he’d gone to school like a normal person, but his upbringing had been ragtag, tossing him from foster home to foster home, and so his records were shoddy at best and at worst there were the years he’d been homeschooled. Of course, he’s smarter than everyone within a hundred mile radius, at least, he figures, but he’s just started at this high school and they haven’t any way of knowing that yet. He’s just hoping they’ll let him graduate within the next year so he can go off to college and have something resembling his own life.

But it still puts him so far down on the totem pole as to be comical — not only is he a freshman, but worse, he’s a dork of a freshman without even the benefit of a gaggle of dorks to call friends. He’s totally alone, totally nobody, made of gangly limbs and floppy hair and the sort of gracelessness that only a mother could find charming, and he doesn’t even have one.

Instead of talking to her, he asks about her. Whenever she passes in the hallway, she draws attention — it’s easy enough to turn to the person next to him like he doesn’t know her, and make some off-handed comment, and within a month he knows her name: River Song. Gorgeous name. Sort of name a superhero would have. He knows she’s skipped more than one grade, so she’s even younger than him, and he knows that she dates a lot of people — guys and girls, he finds — but never for very long. Once, he has a short conversation with someone who was dumped by her, and the fellow isn’t even mad. He says he’d never had it so good, and never would again; he says, looking totally dumbfounded by his own actions, that when she dumped him, he thanked her for her time.

John isn’t surprised — he’d thank her, too. He’d thank her in every filthy way he could think of. But it’s not just lust that draws him to her, although that’s a big part of it. She’s brilliant, too. They have a class together, a history elective, and sometimes when the teacher lets them debate he makes sure to go up against her. When he first comes back at her, she looks at him like he’s the dirt on her shoes, like he’s not even a person, and he pushes back even harder — he’s a genius, he’s a genius even among geniuses, but she makes him work for it. She’s quicker with words than he is, her tongue is twice as sharp, and when she can’t quite parry his point she’s clever enough to make him seem stupid. Of course, he gives as good as he gets, and slowly the look of disdain transforms to a look of amusement every time they argue. Her eyes light up, her cheeks flush. He dreams about that face, about the quirk of her brow when he says something particularly tactless, about the roll of her thunder-laugh when she thinks he’s reaching.

Within three months he’s in love with her. Head over heels, probably was the moment he saw her. River Song. He thinks his heart beats out those two words. Still, he can’t talk to her outside of class — sometimes he thinks she’s going to talk to him, but in the end she always walks away. It’s not until much later he sees the challenge in her eyes when she looks at him from across a room and, hopeful, he follows her across the football field during gym class one day — at a safe distance.

She disappears behind the bleachers, and when he gets there, she’s nowhere to be found. John snoops around for a full five minutes before he turns around, frustrated, to find her exactly behind him. He jumps about a foot in the air.

"My, someone’s jumpy," she says.

"Yeah, alright, act like you wouldn’t jump a bit too if someone popped up right behind you," he mutters crossly, tugging at the hem of his shirt awkwardly. She smirks.

"I don’t scare easy, sweetie," she says. "What are you doing back here?"

"Going for a walk," he says, quickly.

She quirks a brow. “Behind the bleachers.”

"Needed some fresh air," he says.

"Behind the bleachers," she repeats.

“Yeah,” he says, “got a problem?”

"Not at all, honey," she says. "Just hoped you’d be a bit braver than all that."

“Pardon?”

"Everyone’s scared of me," she says with the sort of smile that tells him she’s equal parts hurt by and proud of the fact, "I thought you might be different."

"I’m not afraid of you," he says, but his voice cracks a bit as he says it.

"No?" she says, stepping closer to him. She’s like a lioness, he thinks. That’s why he cold never pin her down — he kept trying to pin her down like a butterfly against cork-board when what he really needed was a bloody chair. He steps back, and she laughs, low in her throat. "I think you are."

"Not a chance, Song," he says.

"So you do know my name," she says.

"Of course I do," he says. Then, flushing, "we have a class together."

"Ah, yes," she says. "But you’re always very careful to keep every discussion during class time and go to great lengths to make every debate impersonal enough that it doesn’t seem odd that you never use my name."

"Yes, well," he says, then stops. The truth is, he thinks if he says her name, he’ll never stop, but he can’t tell her that. "I’m a professional."

River scoffs. “You’re a twelve year old.”

"I’m seventeen,” he says, “what are you, fifteen? Twenty? Eight-and-a-half?”

"Fifteen," she says, looking at him like he’s daft. "So, are we going to do this?"

"Do what?” he says. She crowds him even further, backing him against a bleacher support and he just barely manages to maintain his balance.

"Well, you followed me under the bleachers," she says, "you know an awful lot about me, you stare at me in the halls. I thought we were going to snog."

"I’m sorry, what? What?”

"Not interested then?"

"River, I’m — you’re — of course I’m bloody interested it’s just — and you —" she cuts up off by fisting her hands in his shirt and hauling him to her. His mind goes completely still and quiet as she kisses him. His first kiss, truth be known, but it’s perfect — her lips are soft and taste faintly of cherry chapstick, her hands loosen their grip and flatten against his chest. When he hesitantly reaches out to wrap his arms around her waist she melts into him like she’s been waiting for it since he followed her back here. Kissing River Song feels a bit like dying, and he’s never been happier.

When she pulls back, she lingers near, watching him with an unexpected amount of fondness as he licks his lips. He feels a bit drunk as he looks at her, even more beautiful up close.

"I hear you burn through dates like petrol," he says.

"Yes," she says, smiling slightly.

"I don’t know if I like that," he says.

"Fair enough," River says, sliding a hand up to rest the flat of it against his cheek and pressing more closely again him. "Do you want to go to prom with me?"

"Prom’s not until June, River. It’s only November."

"I know," she says.

"Yes," he says, and from then on, they’re inseparable, even when she hates him (no, she doesn’t.)


End file.
